Piggyback Loading in the 70's

I am modeling a small yard in Minden, LA in 1976. The yard has two piggyback tracks. I know that there were no ramps for the tracks even at that time. Does anyone know what equipment may have been used to load and unload piggyback trailers at that time period in a small yard? Also does any company model that type of equipment in HO scale?

In the 1970s, locations such as Minden probably employed portable ramps for a couple of reasons:

Trailers could arrive facing in either direction since the loaders in Portland Maine or, Portland Oregon had no idea which way Minden's ramp was oriented. Cars with trailers pointed the wrong way would have to be turned on a wye or turntable if one was available. This required additional switching, thus additional expense.

By the mid 70s, most railroads were phasing out their smaller piggyback terminals in favor of larger facilities in major cities. It was faster and cheaper to load/unload trailers in large, multi tracked yards, even with circus style fixed ramps and truck them 50 miles to the consignee, instead of stopping every 40 or 50 miles to pick up or set out a few cars. Circus handling of trailers was rapidly losing favor, no matter how many or how few trailers were involved.

It is highly unlikely a railroad would spend money on a loader such as the Wheels of Time model to serve the two tracks at Minden when Shreveport was relatively close by. Most likely, while Minden was an active piggyback terminal, a portable ramp was employed. A picture of one is on p.94 of Kalmbach's "Piggyback and Container Traffic" book. The last one I saw was on the L&N in Gulfport MS in 1974. It was used on a double ended siding so east or west bound trains could set off and pick up piggyback cars. The ramp was towed to where it was needed according to the direction the nose of the trailers faced.

I vaguely remember a model of a portable ramp being offered in HO back in the 1970s, but by whom, I don't recall. Still, it should be an easy scratch build.

A picture of one is on p.94 of Kalmbach's "Piggyback and Container Traffic" book. The last one I saw was on the L&N in Gulfport MS in 1974. It was used on a double ended siding so east or west bound trains could set off and pick up piggyback cars. The ramp was towed to where it was needed according to the direction the nose of the trailers faced.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I'll need to get a hold of that book and then try to scratch build one.

It would appear that pamphlet is from somewhere in the early to middle 1960's, because there are ZIP codes listed for the offices at the bottom, and those didn't come into being until 1963. The tractor pulling the portable ramp is definitely an older model, but yard trailers often were older models, no need for the latest because they didn't have to pull heavy loads on the highway.

That portable ramp looks the same as ones seen in later photos, I doubt the design changed much, there was little need for it to change.

In those NP photos, all those trailers are 60's era 40' stuff, and 85' flat cars, also dating that to the mid 60's.

The trailer in this photo is also a 40'er from the 60's. The tractor in the photo above is a B model MACK, produced from 1953 to 1966. But that means little because those trucks lasted so well they can still be found in use today.

When I was a teen in the early 70's, CAROLINA FREIGHT was still using their B models for local deliveries and had an inhouse rebuilding program that kept them looking like new. They did not phase them out until the mid 80's.

My father worked in the trucking business most of his life, and for short time with the SOUTHERN RAILWAY in their piggyback system. I learned a lot.......

Now that I found the pamphlet, I linked to above, and a re-look at the Walthers ramp, I think it would be a fairly easy bash project, to make the NP portable ramp, using the Walthers kit.

Mike.

The biggest problem with the Walthers ramp is that it is not really wide enough......

It needs to be wider than the truck/trailer. Being an unloading ramp for trailer contents, it is barely as wide as the trailer. Just looking at the pictures I doubt the trailer wheels would even fit on it width wise.

That B model Mack, looks like it has an old style Bartlett hydraulic fifth wheel on it. Place I worked for in the 60's until they shut their doors in 82' started out with a IH R-190 1954 single axle tractor converted into a spotter that the shop installed a Bartlett lift on. Funny thing about was, that when you lifted a trailer, the springs would go down first, once they bottomed out, it would lift the trailer up. Sure beat the heck out of cranking dolly legs all nite though. They finally broke down and bought some Capacity spotters, with a large air bag lift on it, solid mounted, (hard rubber) axle.

That portable ramp I vaguely remembered has been found. It was made by Penn Line and advertised on p.15 of the May, 1958 MR as their kit number A1-K, with "die cast sidemembers and safety pattern metal deck." Price: 75 cents, in 1958.

I spent several years around Springhill, and did some consulting in Minden.

Neither of the railroads going through there was a serious 'through' line by the early Nineties, and I think it likely that any organized piggyback traffic would depend on a regulated environment ... or a supportive local Chamber of Commerce wanting to expand local intermodal. The completion of I-20 to the south would put a very effective kibosh on any particular piggyback 'advantage' in Minden.

I can't imagine the level of traffic that would justify a Letroporter or sidelift gear for that town, or even assignment of some kind of yard tractor for loading and unloading. So I think portable ramps and circus-type loading would be the only real practical solution; my guess is that some careful instructions about 'which way the trailers faced' might be involved as part of the routing instructions. It is at least possible that, in your era, there would be at least the equivalent of a wye between lines on the Shreveport (west) side, so you could switch ends with only a few moves; this might be an interesting thing to model if you have the space.

Single trailers have always moved on single flatcars even up into the 1990s as trailer lengths grew, often before flatcar length could catch up. In the late 1970s, up into the 1980s, railroads converted surplus, or outmoded equipment into cars capable of transporting newer, longer, trailers. Railroads such as Southern, CNW, MKT, cut 50 foot boxcars down into trailer movers. Santa Fe used re-purposed bulkhead flatcars from wallboard service. Prior to that, some railroads cut down old gondolas and applied tie-downs.

Athearn's 25 foot tandem axle trailers and 48 foot "piggyback" cars seem to be from that great 1950s "NKP"--No Known Prototype-railroad. The cars have no hitches or tie downs, and no bridge plates in an era when it was all circus style loading. It seems to be a matter of a manufacturer adding "play value" to their product offering instead of following a given prototype.

Shorter trailers similar to Athearn's were extant right up to today, but most trailers less than 32 feet in length were single axle. The 40 foot trailer became legal in 1957, making the 75 foot flatcar obsolescent. In 1981 the 45 footer became the new standard and a trailer building rush was on. Owners with large numbers of relatively new 40 footers began programs to "stretch" them an additional five feet. By the time everybody had their 45 footers in service, trailer length jumped to 48 feet in 1985. In 1991, 53 feet became the new standard although some juridictions permit 57 footers.

"Piggyback & Container Traffic" by Jeff Wilson, (Kalmbach Books, ISBN: 978-1-62700-383-4) will answer your intermodal questions. The spine car concept began in the late 1950s with New York Central's Flexi-Van container cars. In the late 1970s, Santa Fe began experimenting with a six unit, articulated skeleton car that was made possible by the move away from circus style loading and unloading. This led to the 10 platform "Fuel Foiler" which was covered in a scratch building article in the September 1982 issue of MR. Another interesting concept that was tried in the 1980s was, the two-axle spine car that could carry a single 45 or 48 foot trailer. Trailer Train had them by the thousands but, handling them empty (light weight) led to more excitement than railroads wanted and all except one, were scrapped.

And here is all you have to do make the Athearn cars closer to the real 54' cars carrying two vans:

Remove the excess axles on the trailers, move the landing gear back, modify the rub rails, add bridge plates and bridge plate retaining chain stakes, and create some fifth wheel jacks. I skip the binder chains, but add spare tires to many trailers, which were common in the 50's.